Love Is Hell
by spheeris1
Summary: Short fiction (drabbles) concerning Dorothy & Relena.... [Finished]
1. One

**__**

Love Is Hell

By spheeris1

Pairing: Dorothy/Relena

Warnings/notes: Short fiction (drabbles), angst, no piece is connected to another and the title is: (1) a GW doujinshi and (2) a Ryan Adams album---the similarities end there

---

[Winter]  
  
Pale pretty pink upon your lips, wrapped in cashmere and showered in tiny white snowflakes.   
Crystal in moonlight, drifting downward and covering milky skin.  
That's you, isn't it? Outside my window...  
That's you. I know you, don't I?  
I've watched you from the shadows, pushed my way past darkness and into your light.  
Stepping into snowdrifts, ice clinging to my calves--come with me, silent and naked--floating on nighttime daydreams.  
It's thin over the lake, Relena-sama.  
And I hope you crash down, swimming within a watery tundra.  
Because I love you.

**__**

[Pale]   
  
Relena believes in justice.  
And peace, Relena loves peace like others love sex.  
It makes her glow, it makes her face open up like a flower, it makes her sigh in ecstasy.  
Dorothy knows this because she watches Relena like a hawk circling a field mouse.  
At first it was a job.  
Then it was fun.  
Now it is an obsession.  
Watching Relena as Relena watches the sky and the sky looks at no one--where is Relena's reluctant knight tonight?  
Is he playing with his best friend, that tangled emotion called guilt?  
Dorothy has seen him once or twice. She thought his face next to Relena's completed the picture of absolute pacifism.  
Now, Dorothy puts her face in his position.  
What is peace without war?  
Dorothy asked this question once, only for Relena to calmly shoot it down.  
The hawk brought down by a tiny, soft, gray mouse--how pathetic and weak.   
Dorothy hates those feelings. And she sees those feelings mirrored in the eyes of Relena's knight--that's why Dorothy can hate him so.  
If he has that look, then he can step in...if he ever decided to...if he ever wanted Relena the way Dorothy wants her...  
But he doesn't.  
And the stars do not answer the Queen of the World, no matter how often she stares longingly.  
And Dorothy is so much closer than Relena realizes.

**__**

[Revolutions]   
  
Armed to the teeth is what the papers say. Media stays back, behind flimsy barricades of white and orange, cameras flashing.  
And everyone on the other-side, in hooded sweatshirts and jeans, sneakers covered in soot, cold hands holding molotov cocktails--they are the ones who will rule the world one day.  
Tear gas swirls around like fog and Dorothy, who tore her banquet dress on the way out, thinks that it is beautiful--she is thinking about Earth, the blitz in London circa 1940-something, tin shelters packing humans like sardines--Dorothy breathes in the scent of burning metal like fragrant air.  
And a hand grabs her left, a hand grabs her right, and so on and so on...all down the line, defectors of Oz and Gundam pilots, all down the line--a revolution, one of many--turning like a planet on fire.  
Military rumbles in and digs up the pavement. Buildings burn down. And orders are shouted, passing judgment and calling for death. Dorothy thinks about Joan of Arc, her hair melting even as she dreamed of righteousness--Dorothy feels a love for her that she would not have felt years ago.  
Years ago, she had an idea of peace and war. Of image and reality. But it all fell away with the realization that nothing would change--the world, the colonies--all became stagnant. So, she had to throw herself in the machine of time and pop out a martyr. They **all** had to.  
And so the bullets fly, the soldiers charge, the flash of incandescent light blinds...and Dorothy grips the hand in her left tightly, jerking it to her lips and placing a kiss there...before it is too late and they are all running and killing and dying. Relena looks at her brokenly, the eyes of peace filled with so much love-struck pain.  
Dorothy lets her go and tosses a bottle before running down a dark alleyway.  
She doesn't look back.

**__**

[A Lesson In Bad Love]

What you learned from your parents was not my kind of devotion.

Your father died for the world and so, you think stupidly, that you should do the same.

Standing up there, speaking the words of an adult in your dress of sparkling white.

Standing up there, telling everyone that war is not the answer.

What school taught you about your mind is not my kind of thinking.

Those students idolized you and trailed after you like dogs.

Those teachers would do anything you told them to do.

Did you really think the world was built this way? Are you that naïve, even now?

With the damn world falling apart?

Someone needs to take you aside and show you some reality.

I thought one of your defenders might be able to pull it off…always ignoring you, always wanting to kill you, always running for the stars at the sight of you…

Instead, you just gripped to your blind faith like a priest.

Even those that hate you can't help but stick that title on you: a martyr of the highest.

A beautiful debutante ruler, using shining Gundams for party pendants.

Someone needs to pull you back and let you see, let you really see the world.

Drag you through a sewer or two.

Pimp you out. Sell you for cheap. And leave you to die.

Then you might get it…what everyone is fighting for…it is not peace, Relena.

They are fighting for their moment.

15 minutes of fame is all the rest of us are allowed, unlike yourself.

We are all wanting to shine for a second before the powers that be blow it all to hell.

Someone should have let you in on this little life secret.

Then, when I look into your eyes and tell you I hate you, you'd get it…you would understand that the line between love and hate is so damn thin…

But no, it didn't turn out that way.

You are gorgeously and ridiculously vacant when I break you.

And when I tell you that I am leaving you, your tears topple down--one by one--until you are stained in fairy princess salt and pain.

Someone should have told you not to love girls like me…

**__**

[Carnival]

Pretty in pink and silent in blue,

Like girls and boys might do.

But we are women on the run…

We are just trying to find a little fun…

You asked me to go and so I went.

I never claimed to understand what goes on in your brain…it could be the state of the universe or what color lipstick to wear…you are just that scattered.

So, Relena-sama, wants a merry-go-round! She wants to eat sticky sweet cotton-candy and spin about in teacups! She wants to spend the night under the stars at the top of the ferris-wheel…and see the war from another perspective…

How pretty the explosions are from far away and up very high!

Orange and yellow blasts, then swallowed up by the glittering night…

Like fireworks that maim and kill.

'You turn even this into a nightmare…' Relena sighed out as we walked among all the other people.

And it is true. I live to take your dreams and trample them. It is more fun then this place, then shooting down metal ducks to win a gigantic stuff bear.

You take my hand and drag me around, determined to enjoy yourself despite my attitude.

That is why you are the pacifist.

A carnival during the end of the world is the perfect way to enjoy what is left of your time!

And that is why I love war.

If a bomb blew this little section away at this very moment, I would waste my last breath cheering its perfect aim.

'Do you just not like being happy, just a regular happy that does not require death and destruction?' Relena asks me as we sit down in the cart on the ferris-wheel.

And I answer in my usual way, more to bother you and not disappoint that cheeky girl inside myself.

But I start to wonder…have I ever enjoyed a simple (and calm) time in my entire life?

As I child, I was so witty and insolent. It was my way or the highway, so to speak.

Then, as I grew up, I became even more set in my thoughts.

Certain ideals took hold of me and never would let go…or I would not let go of them…thus I am as you see me.

Deceptive. Clever. Lover of battle--whether with body or mind.

Then it hits me. Relena is not trying to make me enjoy her type of happy at all, nor is she trying to change how I view this night…

…she is saying I have become predictable…

While she is watching the stars and grinning, I am in a state of shock.

My moves, always I prided myself on slipping past enemy lines with my false cheer…now they have become as easily visible as the sun during the dawn!

I was so busy trading barbs that I did not see the look in her eyes.

She knows what I will say before I say it! 

What an infuriating realization…how lax of me, to let her get to know me that well…or to be around her as much as I have and underestimate her…

All this time, we have been in our own personal war!

Miss Peace has been toying with me and stringing me along, laughing at my easy answers and letting me think I had won somehow!

Well…I don't think so, Relena-sama…not Dorothy Catalonia. She is no easy mark.

Not tonight. Not ever.

'I can show you unpredictable…' I mutter to myself and Relena looks over at me, puzzled.

'Did you say something?'

I plaster a huge smile to my face and grab your hand, holding it tight. You stare at me in utter confusion and my heart just sings out in joy. 

'Miss Relena, I do not think I have ever had this much fun in my whole life…I tried to fight it off, of course, but now--now, I want to come here every night until they must leave! And with you…naturally…' And I wink for good measure, just bursting with anticipation at your mass confusion and slow creeping horror.

So, imagine my disbelief when you just lean over and kiss me! On the lips! And pull away as if…as if…that was the whole reason you brought me here in the first place, to get in this spinning circle and sit at the top for what feels like hours…!

Just to kiss me.

Just…to kiss…me…

I cannot help but sigh, yet I do not let go of your hand. I can analyze that later I suppose.

'You win.' I say as the ferris-wheel starts up again.

---

TBC


	2. Two

**__**

Love Is Hell

By spheeris1

Pairing: Relena/Dorothy

Warnings/notes: See Part One

---

[Cellophane]

I think I want your arms around me tonight.

I won't say to come back tomorrow though.

This bed I try to sleep in…it has sharp edges, it reeks of gunpowder.

Make it all go away…tonight…make my world more than peace and power and playing games with faceless bodies.

I don't want to hear the call of another battle. I don't want his cobalt eyes staring at me from the depths of my mind. I don't want to be a savior tonight.

No, I do not just think it.

I want your body against mine. Your arms of slender grace and your fingers of delicate malice--they will be pressed to me, they will become so much a part of me as if my own flesh had disappeared…you and I will become one.

For tonight.

For tonight.

Shut the long curtains in this dark cavern of a room. Close the heavy door and turn off the lights.

In this place, I am not ruling the free world.

In this moment, I am not some idealistic school-girl needing a good dose of reality.

I just want you to touch me and kiss me. 

I want to feel your type of real.

Pain and pleasure so mixed together that they form some kind of new name, with some new meaning…and, one day, if I try to look it up in a dusty old dictionary--your face will be next to the word.

Your arctic blue eyes and snow-white skin. Your golden hair like a river.

And that word is cellophane,

Created by the Earth, thin and crystal clear…

To mesh with anything or anyone like water,

To cover my body in a slippery hold.

---

**__**

[Capture & Consume]

I heard you running down the hall.

And I saw your car race down the road…back to your own fierce kingdom, that place awash in dead bodies and hot lead shrapnel…

__

In my dreams, we are walking down a beach and the ocean is begging to caress us--we are his lost children…

I get up and stare at your robe.

It is tossed to the floor, a silky heap of shimmering lilac…casting a glow in this room. A friendly reminder of how little we have with each other.

__

Neptune is so forceful…he pushes, he pulls…and neither one of us wants to be so used…yet we go in, heads submerged…

I do not claim to understand how this happened the way it did.

We are opposites. We are the same.

I know you wanted me to fall. As for myself?

I just wanted to hear you admit you were wrong. That underneath our constant fighting was something more…caring masked as impatience, love hidden by hate…

__

I see you swim away, bright mermaid…and I am on shore, still watching the horizon…still waiting for you to return to me, to leave behind his realm of underwater delights…

When you kissed me, it was a wicked thing…your tongue in my mouth, moving as a snake would. I was the apple at Eden. I was your paradise that you tried to resist. Your hands twisted up in my hair told the tale, your lips burning holy scripture on my skin.

You wanted me so badly that it hurt you to deny it--but it hurt you to give in.

I was not so troubled. I knew I would be captured and consumed by you.

__

I fell asleep on the beach and woke up alone, in the hanger of epic machinery…maybe I thought I could remember you here, slick with sea oil and smelling of rusted metal…

I stay up till dawn. I think you might return…or perhaps not…I think you might go away, but even that thought does not stay…I think you will find yourself toyed with. 

A little fish…tugged at by the sea…

---

**__**

[Made-Up]

All my dreams are about you…or, at least, a vision of you that is stapled to my memory. Of you, a deadly sneer upon your lips and one eyebrow raised.

Even though the world is safe now.

Even though I got the boy and he is my husband.

Even though you are gone.

I sometimes believe that I made you up. A fictional girl always two steps ahead of me, always just around the corner…wisps of your sunlight hair tickling at the edges of my sanity…

Then I have a meeting. Then I have a conference. Then I am home and he is inside of me and we sleep.

Or…he sleeps and I dream all night long.

Of you, of your fingers gripping my wrist to the point of bones aching.

Of you, of your laugh tearing into me like tiny manicured claws.

He wakes me up and says I was screaming. I say it was nightmare.

But it wasn't…

It was no haunting specter, no phantom, no war-torn soldier come back from the grave to kill me in my sleep.

It was just you.

You being you, as I remember you, you as I wanted you to be…how could he understand? How could anyone?

Love was not part of it.

I could never love anyone really…not even the man beside me.

But when he touches me, I feel protected instead of aroused.

We are like siblings…with some incest.

For you, a fire was born and it races in my veins…for you, I sweat and close my eyes during sex--just to see you…for you, I would have fought forever just to hear you voice against mine…

You've become a way of torture now.

You come out under moonlight.

And I still see you, I still see you…

---

TBC

__


	3. Three

**__**

Love Is Hell

By spheeris1

Pairing: Dorothy/Relena (and vice-versa)

Warnings/notes: See Part One

---

[Borderlines]

Sure, I am all 'balls to the wall' for a girl--that was what first drew your gaze my way, made those baby-blues slide over me in a wash of Spring.

But now that I am older, I don't want to fight.

I will…if I have to.

But I do not go out of my way to battle. These hands just like to rest a little now…I like to pick up a book and turn the pages, even if the story is old and dull.

I like to run my fingertips over gloriously green leaves of the apple trees of Summer. I like to caress your skin before you awake and dash off to lead the world once more.

The papers like to follow you around. They have forgotten my name…because I let them. I let them lose my name in the whirlpool of fame, of glory, of the universe changing for the better.

But they say: _"Dorothy Catalonia, one-time verbal opponent to Miss Peacecraft, now appears to be just a little more than that…"_

They know my 'stats', so to speak. 

Blonde. Blue eyes. A little taller, a little more thin than you. A smile like a razor. A grip of iron. A well-known family name.

And the things they do not know, I keep hidden away. No need to grandstand like before. That girl--she is finally at peace, her own kind of peace--and I have stepped in. 

I take your hand and let you lead.

I keep quiet and let you speak.

I drift upstairs when the nights grow long and I fall asleep, content.

Our school photographs, ancient in so many ways, held every answer.

I stood next to you, smirk in place.

You stood next to me, determined eyes.

And I should have known. I should have seen it. All that pretentious teenage wisdom and worldly knowledge…and I knew not a thing about my heart.

Or its funny way of getting what it wanted without me realizing it.

Other wars will happen.

People are never satisfied. You understand this now.

And I understand you as well, more so than before. I crossed over to your side one night, stepped over your borderlines and into your mind.

And I knew, no matter what we have said in the past, that I love you.

--

[First and Last]

By the time you and I met, I was already experienced.

All those boys around and every single one loved me. Even some girls felt their heart flutter a bit too quickly in my presence.

I have been touched. I have been kissed.

I have teased and toyed and played around.

The good girl image serves the public, serves my fathers ghost, serves the nations of the known universe and their ideals of peace.

And I am not bad--for what I have done is not rotten or wicked--it is just a way to deal with this life I am living.

So, one young man takes me for a dance and I let his hands wander.

I wanted to feel alive…and what better to get your blood flowing strong again?

So, one young girl passes me a note and wants to meet me in the school restrooms…why should I not go there and let her kiss me?

I am not a whore. I am not a slut.

This is just how people survive another day.

Brief connections to remind us of all the good and pleasurable and wonderful things that living can offer…before you return to the grind, to the fight, to the ever-present clouds of doubt and despair.

I knew what to do and what went where and how to get it and how to make it last--before I met you. 

And now there is no after you, even though you are gone and I never find my bed empty. I am not alone right now. I am entangled in some sweaty hold.

But I wish it was you. 

I wish you were holding me down and pressing against me.

I wish your tongue was licking and your mouth was sucking and your were lips kissing me.

I wish your voice was whispering into my waiting ears.

I wish you were here…beside me now…and this time, I would not ask for you to leave. I would not watch in strange horror as you walked out this door, dress back on and overcoat snapped shut--without one look back.

And it was my voice that told you to go.

My words. My expression of disdain. My usual reaction to one-night stands.

Once you disappeared in a bullet of bright yellow…

…I cried for the first time in years.

It was the last time, though. I will not live with your memory. I will be just as before. Just as strong. Just as powerful.

But…I wish you were here to see me go on…

--

[It Would Never Work Out Like This]

It was typical for us to talk like this.

Now, with everything so calm and ordinary, we could just…well, talk…

Like girls do. Like young women who have seen enough of the world, of its bad and good side, of its fields and of its stars.

Dorothy chats about political events of the day, sipping her iced coffee.

Relena looks through fashion magazines and laments her not-stylish wardrobe.

They shop. They eat at a trendy restaurant. They walk through a park in the late evening. They can hear the birds sing…Never could hear them before.

'I need a break from this place.' Relena states suddenly. That was her way though--to make random comments out of the blue. Dorothy was used to it.

'Where would you go?' Dorothy asks, not missing a beat. Relena really liked that about the other girl--the way she could so easily roll with the punches. Not everyone could do that so very well.

'Somewhere warm. Warmer than here anyway…a beach perhaps, with a place right beside the ocean…The waves are supposed to be good for sleep.' Relena says, glancing up at the cloudless sky. Dorothy spares a sideways glance and thinks, if only for a moment, that Relena is gorgeous.

'Unless they drown you, of course.' Dorothy says dryly. Relena grins over at Dorothy. She has always loved the other girls humor--so witty, so biting--it sparked her icy blue eyes with a touch of warmth. It was very becoming.

'If I went, would you come along? We could suntan all day and swim at night…' Relena says and just barely touches Dorothy's elbow, to pause their strolling. The other girls skin is soft. Very soft. Like a feather. 

Dorothy smiles over at Relena, idly wondering if she could refuse this girl anything. This girl--who Dorothy used to dislike, then admire--but is now, simply, a friend. A good friend. A dear friend even…

'I could never refuse a chance to bathe in the sun, Relena.' Dorothy purrs. And Relena does think it is very much like a purr…like a beautiful cat, claws put away for the day and laying content in your lap.

And for second, neither one of them is talking or moving. Just smiling. Just drinking in the suppressed knowledge that between the two of them…is something too special for words, for actions and declarations…

Then Relena comments are the poor walking quality of her shoes. And Dorothy is taking a quick call on her cell phone.

They walk on through the park, bags in hand…

---

THE END


End file.
